GamesMaster UK has another tip from their Square Enix source, this time detailing some of the things gamers can expect from Final Fantasy XV. Although GamesMaster UK was initially wrong about the unveiling of FFXV at E3, they are adamant about the validity of their source.

Here's what the source had to say:

- Including the concept planning and pre-production phase, the game has already been in development for over 4 years.

- It entered full production in January 2010, a month after FFXIII was released in Japan. Since then it has had a development team of just over 200 people.

- The director is the same person who directed FFVI, FFIX and FFXII, Hiroyuki Ito.

- The co-director led a small part of the development team to make Tactics Ogre for the PSP in parallel with FFXV. Heís currently multi-tasking as lead UI designer of FFXIV 2.0 and co-director of FFXV.

- The game design and battle system will be a major evolution of FFXII.

- The game will be open world and have sprawling, crowd-filled cities on par with Assassinís Creed.

- The battle system now allows you to target different parts of an enemyís body like in Vagrant Story.

- Yoichi Wada (president of Square Enix) wants the game to have a world scale and volume of content that surpasses The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. He also wants the game to surpass FFVII in worldwide sales and critical reception.

- The director is the same person who directed FFVI, FFIX and FFXII, Hiroyuki Ito.

- The co-director led a small part of the development team to make Tactics Ogre for the PSP in parallel with FFXV. Heís currently multi-tasking as lead UI designer of FFXIV 2.0 and co-director of FFXV.

- The game design and battle system will be a major evolution of FFXII.

- The game will be open world and have sprawling, crowd-filled cities on par with Assassinís Creed.

- The battle system now allows you to target different parts of an enemyís body like in Vagrant Story.

- Yoichi Wada (president of Square Enix) wants the game to have a world scale and volume of content that surpasses The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. He also wants the game to surpass FFVII in worldwide sales and critical reception.

You know if we're going to talk about an FF XV, I just had an interesting question pop into mind upon reading this title thread.

-Why should I care?

Allow me to elaborate as that's a really, really context-less question and not as snarky as it sounds. Another one needs to follow:

-What is a Final Fantasy game?

Adaptation and evolution is great and all, but is there really anything that makes a FF game an FF game these days? They've jumped themes, setting, character types, battle systems, quality, ect. so many times over so many installments that there's really not much of any 'continuity in expectation' anymore. Really about the only string connecting a Final Fantasy game to any other Final Fantasy game is a few recycled monster designs and summon names. I'm not trying to say this was a conscious thing on SE's part; but rather an inevitability of having so many games with the same label with a constant 'need' to reinvent the wheel.

So when we start saying 'Hey there's info on the new Final Fantasy' I'm actually left with a feeling of "Okay...why should I be excited about this compared to any other JRPG?"

Maybe it's just over-exposure through age catching up to me but really...what's 'Final Fantasy' about Final Fantasy these days?

To be honest I might be more excited/interested about this game if it were named anything else but Final Fantasy just because of that factor.

Good to know that Hiroyuki Ito is the director, been wondering for a while what happened with him. Either way is better just keep the excitement at a reasonable level.

Though, I'm pretty surprised that the game is planned to be released on current hardware... maybe they'll show a teaser at TGS along with maybe giving more concrete info about a release date for Versus XIII? I guess that would be too good coming from SE nowadays anyway, but eh, never say never.

That was the same conclusion I came to, unless they really are planning to simply give up and rename Versus as XV.

Also even I doubt that Squeenix would start working on FFXV before releasing Versus, XIV, or even XIII-3 for that matter (if they are then Squeenix needs to sell off their inhouse IPs and become full time publishers).

It is said that it is probably all fake. All those ideas sound wonderful, and exactly the direction I would love the series to head. They just need to be careful that if they made it open world. To make the side quests interesting and meaningful, and not just a ton of boring meaningless ones, something I i find Xenoblade does, as much as I enjoy that game.

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It's hard to believe S-E could keep this a secret. I mean heck, they've announced games before they even started working on them. They did kind of surprise us with FFXIV...and look how that turned out.

Am I the only one who hopes that this isn't true? Not that it would make a bad game, per say, but it totally swings the opposite direction of the recent games. I think that's FFs biggest problem these days, every game tries to re-construct the genre in a totally different direction, sort of apologizing for last installment. While none of the recent games have been perfect, I think it would be more constructive to slow down and improve on the ideas of the last, instead of completely switching paradigms. The FF series has been a crazy pendulum swinging wildly between extremes. And none of them get it "right". Curiously, each game falters in completely different ways from the others, which is actually kind of hopeful, because you could imagine them putting all the right elements together in one game... but it never happens, because by virtue of their development, they can never have a chance to really build on, and learn from their previous outtings.

- FFIX was a fun, open world romp with lots of fun characters- FFX was a dark, melodramatic epic that was entirely linear, had a great story and boring characters and locales- FFXII was an open world game of emotionless political intrigue, no emphasis on characters- FFXIII was dark, linear, and melodramatic, with an idiotic story and pretty good characters

Jesus... I don't know a series with more extremes! It's bizarre, usually when a game series is flawed, the games make the same mistakes over and over again. Square doesn't, but they can never escape having some huge negatives that change each time.

As much as FFXIII got wrong, they got a lot right, and it would be really helpful if they fine tuned that style for a while. That's why FFXIII-2 is probably the best game since FFX, and my personal favorite since FFIX, it was able to learn from it's predecessor's mistakes.

FFXII seems like a dead-end. It was a good exercise in exorcising the melodrama from the series (which they didn't learn from, obviously). However, even with a strong cast, it de-emphasized them so much that the game was completely void of feeling. I'm concerned that if they try to build on that direction, it will be more of the same empty storytelling, another extreme in reaction to FFXIII. FF needs to stop going to extremes, but find some good solid middle ground.

I'm always skeptical of open-world games since they tend to do a shitty job telling you how to advance the main storyline, and I personally think non-linearity is vastly overrated, and that linear titles tend to have better plots.

I'm always skeptical of open-world games since they tend to do a shitty job telling you how to advance the main storyline, and I personally think non-linearity is vastly overrated, and that linear titles tend to have better plots.

I agree with you to an extent. Most RPGs that are solely focused on letting you do whatever you want to do all the time, tend to suffer in the story department, this is one of the reasons I can never get into the elder scrolls games. There is a crap ton to do, but I don't care about the character of the world so it means very little. But some linearity is important. Games like Final Fantasy 9 do this well. You always know where to advance the plot, but when you feel like taking a break, there are usually new and exciting places to explore.

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those bullet points speak to me. that is what i want for the most part. if they hit those bullet points on that agni engine i'd be back to day one, but till then i'll be waiting for reviews on anything they put out. i'm crossing my fingers the Hiroyuki Ito one is going to happen. i saw a kotaku article a while back that talked about SE's cycle and how it would stand to reason it'd be his turn again hope they are right.